RTC Magazine

RTC: VadaTech certainly appears to be a dynamically growing company, opening a new manufacturing facility in
Nevada and a new sales office in Alabama. With a fairly focused product line, you also offer to do custom work for customers. Can you give us an idea of how much custom work versus standard activity you do? Also, at what point might a custom or semi-custom design be incorporated as part of your standard product offering?

Karamooz: Since the inception of our company in August 2004, we currently have over 60 products in production. VadaTech is primarily focused on making standard products and we work closely with our customers to stay within the standard industry form-factors. From our 60+ products to date we have about 14 products that are non-standard. Six out of 14 of these non-standard products are shelf mangers for the ATCA. Since the ATCA specification does not address the form factor for the shelf manger, each chassis vendor has improvised a
different form-factor, which makes it difficult to avoid custom form-factors.

RTC: Again, judging from VadaTech’s product offerings, you appear to be very committed to the development of the market for ATCA and AMC-based systems. We keep hearing that ATCA is about to take off strongly, but the start date for that seems to be repeatedly pushed back a bit. What is your sense of when and or how the market’s acceptance of ATCA will really result in sustained volume growth in sales?

Karamooz: We are seeing a tremendous interest in ATCA and AMC-based systems in different market segments from Telecom, for which the ATCA was originally targeted, to the military and automation, which basically is interested in the MicroTCA. A number of the large opportunities we are involved with will go into volume production in 2007 and 2008. I envision we will see the popularity of ATCA and
MicroTCA explode when all the pieces of the puzzle are matured.

RTC: ATCA is a standard that offers many options and configuration possibilities. The macro view of this is whether or not to build a system by integrating a large number of functions (CPU, disk drive, memory, communications processor, Gigabit Ethernet, etc.) onto a single board or to use the ATCA board as a carrier to be configured by adding a mix of AMC boards to define its ultimate functionality. Do you see cases (such as hitting a certain volume of production vs. more specialized system designs) where both of these approaches can be justified or do you think one or the other will mostly prevail?
Karamooz: A certain amount of basic functionality is typically required on any CPU blade. Even a full-featured blade may not address all system requirements in every case. AMC modules will always be used to provide functionality where needed. There will be a market for both approaches depending on the systems requirements. Combining functionality typically lowers cost and is more appealing to the customers with high volume. AMC modules provide flexibility where the development of a custom board is not warranted, and it allows customers to meet their requirements from different vendors and not be locked into a single source.

RTC: Having asked the above question, we note that VadaTech’s commitment to ATCA/AMC includes a variety of ATCA carrier boards that are designed not only to include AMC mezzanines, but also to allow the integration of other legacy form-factors such as CompactPCI and VME into an ATCA system. Can you share with us your philosophy—both from a technical and marketing standpoint—on this approach?

Karamooz: With ATCA/MicroTCA, as with any new technology, it takes time for board vendors to transition their product offerings. In some cases this transition may never happen, especially for modules customers developed in-house. We introduced our line of carrier products to bridge the gap between ATCA and legacy VME, CPCI, PCIe, PCI-x and PMC technology. With the different carrier modules for ATCA, the transition to ATCA could happen sooner then later for customers adapting this technology.
For example, one of our customers that elected to use ATCA for their system architecture needed a dual high-performance graphic module. They used our ATC105 Carrier, which allows up to two PCIe modules. They used standard graphic products from NVIDIA to be integrated on the ATC105 Carrier. The power budget for each graphic module was 70W for a total of 140W for two on the carrier. Using off-the-shelf PCIe graphics boards was a very cost-effective solution. We have fielded a number of systems using the carrier approach and the customers are very satisfied. Further, as an added feature all of our carrier boards can also be a shelf manager, effectively reducing the cost of the ATCA system.

RTC: Originally conceived as a mezzanine form-factor in the context of ATCA, AMC has now blossomed out on its own with the development of the MicroTCA specification, which lets developers build entire systems with full shelf management based on the AMC form-factor. How do you assess the growth potential for
MicroTCA, and in what areas do you see it moving beyond communications and networking?

Karamooz: The military arena has recognized the many benefits of MicroTCA as a system solution to replace some of their older generation product in both battlefield and non-battlefield environments. The ability to handle logistics and configuration management from the system is an enormous cost savings in deployed systems, which is only offered in the ATCA/MicroTCA architecture. Switched fabric architecture, hot-swap, redundancy, small form-factor and forecasted lower overall system cost are advantages over other competing technologies.

RTC: There is a move now to develop a rugged specification for MicroTCA. Do you see it possibly competing with established form-factors such as VME or planned standards such as VITA 56 in rugged and even military applications?

Karamooz: While VME will continue to play a large role in legacy military systems for years to come, MicroTCA offers many benefits. We are already seeing military contractors starting to design new systems around MicroTCA. As more and more
MicroTCA products become available, it will further fuel the growth in these areas.

RTC: In the industrial automation sector, there appears to be a significant growth in the use of small form-factor, X86-based (read PC-like) modules such as PC/104, EBX, COM Express and others. First, is this an area that VadaTech has an interest in participating in? And secondly, what processor architectures do you expect to dominate the networking and communications arena?

Karamooz: VadaTech currently has no interest in competing in the PC/104 or COM Express market; however, we have developed several carrier products that use COM Express modules. We currently buy these modules from other companies. These modules are a very cost-effective approach to adding intelligence to a carrier and are easily upgradeable. The PowerPC is certainly very attractive for the networking and communication area, and at the high end, BroadCom 1480 or NPUs will be more feasible.

RTC: We continue to see a migration to PC-based systems in a variety of applications from simulation to industrial control. Only a few years ago, PC motherboards, regardless of how they were packaged, were anathema to industrial-control applications. Now we’re seeing an increasing use of these with specialized I/O. Do you believe the PC, in perhaps its most native form-factor, will win out over more purpose-built approaches such as VME, cPCI
or MicroTCA?

Karamooz: I think we will continue to see PCs used in applications where the I/O counts are small and cost is the main driver. PCs do have their limitations. They are only available for a limited amount of time in the same configuration. It will pose a problem if the configuration has to stay the same for several years. Additionally, PCs are hard to ruggedize, have limited I/O expandability, and do not fulfill the system requirements in application where space and power requirements are constrained. We try to do more with less, in a smaller space, with greater functionality, and faster than we did the year before. CPU solutions will continue to evolve to fulfill these requirements. The markets are diverse, each with a different set of requirements. Several years ago the telecom industry looked at 1U/2U servers to replace VME and CPCI, but this didn’t happen in all applications. Now we’re seeing these same companies define the requirements for ATCA and MicroTCA specifications to meet their customer needs.

RTC: COM Express has been getting its share of publicity recently. And, while it represents a slightly different approach to open modular systems, it is still judged by some as competitive with other approaches. What do you believe are the strengths and weaknesses of the COM Express approach and do you think such semi-custom approaches have merit?

Karamooz: At VadaTech we have designed several products that utilize COM Express. Since COM Express strictly provides the CPU interface, it allows us to focus on the I/O needs. The CPU technology changes more rapidly then the I/O, so it allows us to upgrade to the new CPU technology without a complete system redesign. COM Express is focused on the x86, which pretty much restricts its use with other processors.

RTC: A recent study showed that the embedded computer business has been growing at over 15% CAG for at least the past two years. Yet, standards-based products such as VME, cPCI, etc. have had less than 5% growth. Only PC/104 and its variants have been able to enjoy the higher rate of growth. Do you anticipate the other standards-based architectures picking up in the coming year, or do you believe the growth will continue with the small form-factor,
X-86-based architectures?

Karamooz: I see ATCA and MicroTCA growing rapidly in the coming year and probably to the detriment of competing technology. The pursuit of ATCA/
MicroTCA by the telecom, industrial automation and military markets should fuel the growth. At the low end of the market spectrum, the small form-factor X-86 will still be the winner.

VadaTech Incorporated
Henderson, NV.
(702) 896-3337.
[www.vadatech.com].